The People’s Republic of China has abandoned its previous restraint and is actively shaping the global order of the 21st century. China has shifted the logic underlying its foreign and security policy with a view to its increased political and economic power, thereby reprioritising a variety of strategic interests. The analysis here is explicitly focusing on China’s international development cooperation. The author, Dr Marina Rudyak, provides a comprehensive overview of China’s international development cooperation, illustrating how Beijing has become one of the largest contributors to development assistance and how the importance of development finance as a foreign policy tool has increased significantly since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. Rudyak, describes how China is increasingly proactive in promoting its authoritarian development model as an attractive example and alternative for developing countries. To this end, she outlines China’s highly complex aid and development financing bureaucracy and highlights the differences in the understanding of development between China and the West.